


Transcendence

by parboiledcrustacean



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Fingering, BDSM, Blindfolds, Deliberate misuse of religious terminology, Explicit Consent, John Irving/Martyrdom, M/M, Sex Work, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:55:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27481561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parboiledcrustacean/pseuds/parboiledcrustacean
Summary: John Irving atones.
Relationships: Cornelius Hickey/Lt John Irving, Lt John Irving/Sgt Solomon Tozer, William Gibson/Lt John Irving
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15
Collections: The Terror Bingo, The Terror Bingo (2020)





	Transcendence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asemic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asemic/gifts).



> Prompt fill 'there is no more holy thing' for The Terror bingo.

There is no more holy thing than martyrdom.  
He’s paid his coin. Paid his board. John Irving will suffer in kind.

It’s an ironically unholy establishment. A dockside bar a man of his rank should never be seen in. He fears recognition even as he slips in the side door. Lieutenant Irving, whoremongerer. (A factual truth). John Irving, deviant. (A shameful one). The self-named son of John Irving, buggerer. (Incorrect. Never that one). He’s relieved every time they slip the rough canvas over his head.

He likes the moments, short-breathed and warm, where he’s alone in it. It rests, hemp scratching his lips like a scolding kiss. It stops him asking them to do it, the bodies which move against him in the darkness, to kiss him as he pants and draw closer. He doesn’t know who they are: prefers it. He’ll know his pretty wife one day and he’ll disrobe before her with his bruises healed and hidden.  
  
‘Back again, sir?’  
  
He knows this one. Feels the treacherous flesh between his legs twitch to life.  
This one talks.  
  
It’s easiest to deal with the boxer. (He envisions a boxer, like him, utilising this as a service in a more chaste way than their other clients. They could meet in a pub and lock eyes and discuss it like men, though they wouldn’t - he doesn’t sound like John would drink in his sort of pub). He hits and it hurts and John stops when he’s breathless, at which point the man helps lower him and his dancing feet down. (His body had brushed John’s once, firm and broad. He had woken under it in his dreams for two weeks).  
  
The one too revolted to touch him, who uses the birch, is also fine. (Hadn’t been so at first. He’d offered services. Offered rates. Noticed the swelling and touched his leg near it and John had bucked towards him with fright.) He charges more. (Clever with his lash-licks). Talks to him less. (Learned not to offer the other type). Leaves the flesh of John’s thighs red and stinging and leaves with his money and a click of the door. A transaction. Like he wants.  
  
This goes beyond.  
Hands move to his thighs. Touch him there as clever fingers undo the laces of his trousers. ('To hit him there', of course, voice a clever mockery of surprise). The heat of breath stirs the hairs on his stomach and John startles. (Lower). ‘They’re proving tricky tonight, sir’. (‘If he insists on arousing him-’. The words swallow themselves, sticking with his spit in John’s dry throat).  
Then they’re off.  
  
Fingers stroke the skin on his legs. Pinch them for fat like a butcher at market, a cleaner image, an image that combined with the cruel nip of short, sharp nails makes this easier to bear.

The first slap.  
His inner thigh staggers at the force of the shock that passes through his skin. Like electricity. Like the dead frogs made to twitch with a live current. A second. A third. The same muscles contract.

A forth is more of a blow than a shock, a heavier feeling slug.  
His thigh’s warm at five. Ignites at six. His eyes streak only at twelve.  
  
And then the other hand’s on him, little and soothing and cold. It cools him down for a second, an aching fever mopped with a damp cloth.  
In parts. The lips that replace it only ignite it further, scraping teeth and hair and lips against stinging flesh.  
  
‘The usual, sir?’  
  
In his head the man’s Lucifer.  
Clever. Terrible. Beautiful as dawn over the Atlantic.  
  
‘Yes.’

There is no more holy thing than martyrdom.  
A finger worms its way inside of him. John Irving burns.


End file.
